Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.

In a shattering work that shifts between a womans private anguish over the loss of her beloved baby cousin and a scholars fierce critique of the American prison system, Danielle Allen seeks answers to what, for many years, felt unanswerable. Why? Why did her cousin, a precocious young man who dreamed of being a firefighter and a writer, end up dead? Why did he languish in prison? And why, at the age of fifteen, was he in an alley in South Central Los Angeles, holding a gun while trying to steal someones car?

Cuz means both cousin and because. In this searing memoir, Allen unfurls a new American story about a world tragically transformed by the sudden availability of narcotics and the rise of street gangsa collision, followed by a reactionary War on Drugs, that would devastate not only South Central L.A. but virtually every urban center in the nation. At thirteen, sensitive, talkative Michael Allen was suddenly tossed into this cauldron, a violent world where he would be tried at fifteen as an adult for an attempted carjacking, and where he would be sent, along with an entire generation, cascading into the spiral of the Los Angeles prison system.

Throughout her cousin Michaels eleven years in prison, Danielle Allenwho became a dean at the University of Chicago at the age of thirty-tworemained psychically bonded to her self-appointed charge, visiting Michael in prison and corresponding with him regularly. When she finally welcomed her baby cousin home, she adopted the role of cousin on duty, devotedly supporting Michaels fresh start while juggling the demands of her own academic career.

As Cuz heartbreakingly reveals, even Allens devotion, as unwavering as it was, could not save Michael from the brutal realities encountered by newly released young men navigating the streets of South Central. The corrosive entanglements of gang warfare, combined with a star-crossed love for a gorgeous woman driving a gold Mercedes, would ultimately be Michaels undoing.

In this Ellisonian story of a young African American mans coming-of-age in late twentieth-century America, and of the family who will always love Michael, we learn how we lost an entire generation.